What does it actually mean to be a long-term investor when the ground beneath your feet is shifting faster than your investment committee can convene?
While the dominant economic narrative has been that supply chains are shifting out of China amidst rising geopolitical competition and that the ASEAN countries are obvious beneficiaries, the truth is more nuanced.
While war weighs heavily on the world’s mind and its portfolio impacts are acutely felt by investors, celebrated geopolitical expert Stephen Kotkin said there is another thing that troubles him even more in today’s society: the "decay" of government performance.
Tokenisation of traditional assets will lead to a boom in on-chain trading, and that in turn opens the door to AI-agentic trading. But there are risks that AI agents may behave in unpredictable ways and, despite the hype surrounding the technology, still produce unexpected investment losses. In these cases, it will typically still be the CIO who bears responsibility – so they’d better understand what their AI agents are up to.
Some investors are “missing the point” of geopolitical risks by equating them to the disruptions from conflicts and wars, according to GIC chief economist Prakash Kannan, but in reality, geopolitical risk is no longer episodic or peripheral. This means investors need to think harder about inflation and country composition in their portfolio.
Long-time practitioners of the total portfolio approach said one of its greatest advantages is that the investment team can make significant asset allocation at its discretion, as interest towards adopting the framework picks up among asset owners to handle more complex decision-making. At FIS Singapore, GIC and OPTrust unpack the governance and risk culture to enable it.
The rise of artificial intelligence-driven trading has raised questions about the possibility of algorithmic investors crowding into many of the same ideas and amplifying stress during times of volatility. Nanyang Technological University computer science professor Bo An explores the question at FIS Singapore.
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